Marie Antoinette

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We wanted an environment that reflected the feeling of Marie being changed and manipulated,” Barrett says of the tent he designed for the film’s opening sequence. Photo: Leigh Johnson Tian Chi, quoted in Joshua A. Fogel, Peter Gue Zarrow, Imagining the People: Chinese Intellectuals and the Concept of Citizenship, 1890–1920, 1997, ISBN 0765600986, p. 173 The increasing unpopularity of Marie Antoinette in the final years before the outbreak of the French Revolution also likely influenced many to attribute the phrase to her. During her marriage to Louis XVI, her critics often cited her perceived frivolousness and very real extravagance as factors that significantly worsened France's dire financial straits. [8] Her Austrian birth and her gender also diminished her credibility further in a country where xenophobia and chauvinism were beginning to exert major influence in national politics. [9] While the causes of France's economic woes extended far beyond the royal family's spending, anti-monarchist polemics demonized Marie Antoinette as Madame Déficit, who had single-handedly ruined France's finances. [10] These libellistes printed stories and articles vilifying her family and their courtiers with exaggerations, fictitious anecdotes, and outright lies. In the tempestuous political climate, it would have been a natural slander to put the famous words into the mouth of the widely scorned queen. Having gotten her start as a child model at the age of three, Dunst was an industry veteran before she could legally drive. Shot between two Spider-Man sequels, Marie Antoinette signaled the type of auteur-driven material the then-23 year-old was interested in pursuing more. Coppola: My friend told me that a lot of moms and pre-teen daughters watch it together as a sort of tradition. There was a screening a few years ago where I got to watch it on a big screen with my daughter, and it was so gratifying to see it through her eyes and how into it she was.

A second consideration is that there were no actual famines during the reign of Louis XVI and only two incidents of serious bread shortages, the first in April–May 1775, a few weeks before the king's coronation on 11 June 1775, and the second in 1788, the year before the French Revolution. The 1775 shortages led to a series of riots that took place in northern, eastern and western France, known at the time as the Flour War ( guerre des farines). Letters from Marie Antoinette to her family in Austria at this time reveal an attitude largely contrary to the spirit of Let them eat brioche: [13] Johnson, Paul (1990). Intellectuals. New York: Harper & Row. pp. 17–18. ISBN 9780060916572. The 'facts' he so frankly admits often emerge, in the light of modern scholarship, to be inaccurate, distorted or non-existent. Rousseau does not name the "great princess", and he may have invented the anecdote altogether, as the Confessions is not considered entirely factual. [6] Attribution to Marie Antoinette [ edit ] Coppola: Marie’s real bedroom was decorated with bright gold and turquoise fabric, so it wasn’t complete artistic license on my part. You never see those pops of color in period films, but I wanted to depict her world the way she saw it.

2. She was the subject of pornography.

Booth, Trudie Maria (2005). French Verbs and Idioms. University Press of America. p.127. ISBN 978-0-7618-3194-5. Kate Mulleavy, Rodarte co-founder: Sofia has always made such personal films, and Marie Antoinette is one of our favourites. I remember seeing the film in a Paris theatre and just being captivated by [Dunst’s] performance and the whole world Sofia created. I knew I had seen something completely iconic. Desmarest: Anyone who did anything on that film was there that night. I tried to stay responsible, but it was difficult because I drank copious amounts of alcohol. Everyone was so relaxed that we ended up having a proper party with lots of drinking and dancing. It was very informal and there was no hierarchy. We all took photos of each other on the steps of Versailles. I think I finally left around six in the morning.

Near the start of 2001, Sofia Coppola wrote to Lady Antonia Fraser on a piece of personalised, pale-blue stationery. Selva: We didn’t wanna limit ourselves to only jewelry that was produced between 1780 and 1794. There’re very few 18th-century jewels and they tend to be heavier, so I selected mostly 19th-century jewels that communicate the youth and hope of the young queen. Sofia wanted the magic of jewelry to help bring the richness of that world to life. “It Was Like Hosting the Ultimate Party” Coppola: I thought that young girls would be into it, but I just don’t think it ever found its way and the marketing didn’t find that audience. But it wasn’t disappointing because I have such good memories of the whole experience. I was also having a baby in Paris so by the time it came out, I had other things on my mind. “It’s Like a Piece of Art You Can Watch” Coppola struggled to condense the queen’s short but eventful life into a film that felt accessible. She enjoyed working her way through Marie Antoinette’s teendom – the parties, the fashion – but was less engaged by her tragic final years. Coppola often alternated between writing Marie Antoinette and the script that became her second feature, a story about a young American woman and a fading movie star in Tokyo.Lever, Évelyne; Temerson, Catherine (2000). Marie-Antoinette: The Last Queen of France. St. Martin's Griffin. pp. 63–65. ISBN 978-0312283339. The opening of Marie Antoinette is inspired by the work of French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, specifically a campaign he shot for Charles Jourdan in fall 1977. Lanser, Susan S. (2003). "Eating Cake: The (Ab)uses of Marie-Antoinette". In Goodman, Dena; Kaiser, Thomas E. (eds.). Marie Antoinette: Writings on the Body of a Queen. Routledge. pp.273–290. ISBN 978-0415933957. Having gotten her start as a child model at the age of three, Dunst was an industry veteran before she could legally drive. Shot between two Spider-Man sequels, Marie Antoinette signalled the type of auteur-driven material the then-23-year-old was interested in pursuing more.

Faithfull: I always thought Sofia’s film was a masterpiece. People are not always understood as the geniuses they are at the time—I don’t think I have been! But with time one gets proper recognition. People will only come to understand Sofia’s vision more as time goes by. I haven’t had much of an acting career so Marie Antoinette is something I’m very proud of.

“I’d Do Anything for Sofia”

Schwartzman: It’s not like anyone was hung out to dry. We all felt like we supported Sofia’s vision and worked hard to make it come true. I just didn’t anticipate those reactions. On the one hand it doesn’t feel good to hear someone say something you made isn’t good, but you also can't really argue with them. We made the movie we wanted to make and all we could do was stand by it. She had optioned the film rights to the esteemed British historian’s best-selling biography, Marie Antoinette: The Journey. Of all the books Coppola read about the doomed teen queen, she considered Lady Antonia’s to be “the best one… full of life, not a dry historical drama.” Unlike other portraits, which drew her as an overindulgent harpy who deserved to lose her head, Marie Antoinette: The Journey approached its subject with a radical sense of empathy. “The elegiac should have its place as well as the tragic, flowers and music as well as revolution,” Lady Antonia wrote in her author’s note. “Above all, I have attempted to tell Marie Antoinette’s dramatic story without anticipating its terrible ending.” Katz: A lot of studios were interested, but all of them wanted us to shoot in Bulgaria or somewhere other than Paris because it would be much cheaper. But Sofia stood her ground and said this wasn’t the type of film where Toronto could substitute for Versailles. Sony said, “You wanna shoot in France? Go for it!” Jean-Jacques Rousseau (left) who coined the phrase " qu'ils mangent de la brioche" in 1765. In the years following the French Revolution, the quotation became attributed to Marie Antoinette (right), although there is no evidence that she said it. Kate Mulleavy, Rodarte co-founder: Sofia has always made such personal films, and Marie Antoinette is one of our favorites. I remember seeing the film in a Paris theater and just being captivated by [Dunst’s] performance and the whole world Sofia created. I knew I had seen something completely iconic.